Questionable comment
I recently received this comment on my post labeled feedback
Hey!
I discovered your audiobook on youtube, and listen to most of it(thanks for the invitation by the way!).
I’m afraid that, since there must always be someone who doesn’t appreciate stuffs, it will here be… me. Sorry!
The thing is I’m not really comfortable with the manichaeism of the prelude. “Good versus Evil”. Because when you talk about moral values, it is a typical occidental and modern acceptation of the word, and so I don’t really know how could anyone in the world could agree on such values. By so the whole ‘good and evil’ stuff just relies on a ‘hero moral consensus’, thereby illegetimating the values the superheroes are defending.
Secondly, the idea of ‘near misses’ not being superheroes but “perfect humans” seems a bit ackward too. The idea of a perfect human, smarter, stronger, faster just gloryfies one type of individuals and by so ‘thrashes out’ the others: “we are not like them but we are superior” do they think. Either they are superheroes, and so not humans but almost gods, or they are humans, and so cannot be ‘perfect’. When can you tell a human is perfect? It just looks too much like biblical ‘chosen ones’ to me. Some will be chosen by God to accomplish things that no other could. Of course, it’s a way of seeing things, but I see it as a commonplace.
Finally I would say that the book is a wonderful and constructed bedtime story, but not much more…
I’m really sorry for being so rude, but since you asked for feedbacks…
This was posted by a gentleman out of France named Vincent. Now Vincent, if you’re reading this I don’t mean to be rude, just stating the facts. When I read this I was a little confused. I didn’t expect someone to look so deep into the first 10 minutes of the audio book. Now what I got out of this was that he didn’t like the whole “Good vs. Evil” thing and he didn’t like the concept of near misses.
As for the “Good vs. Evil” thing, I think that anyone can figure out that a group of people trying to kill almost everybody, spread chaos, and basically destroy the world can be classified as evil. I also think that most people would consider anyone who tried to stop this group in an effort to bring back some order to the word could be considered good. On top of that, I don’t know one story, comic, movie, or whatever about superheroes that doesn’t involve good trying to stop evil, even anti-heroes like Punisher even try to stop evil. The best epics of all time are based on good vs. evil. From the Odyssey to Star Wars it’s all based on good vs. evil. Can’t have Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader. I’ll leave it at that.
Near misses can have enhanced strength, speed, endurance, agility, durability, intelligence, senses, or any combination of these. In order to be classified as a near miss and not superhuman, the scores for strength, speed, endurance, agility, and durability can be no greater than 5 times for your size, weight, height, and build. Intelligence is different, 3 and below is considered near miss, 1 is a normal person, 2 is a bright individual like a doctor, and 3 is very intelligent like an Einstein. Now remember a near miss can have just one enhanced attribute or all of them, if they have all they are considered a “perfect near miss”. Now in my book there are less than 100,000 perfect near misses in the world and the world does not cater to them, for example they are not allowed to play sports. Some may consider themselves superior but almost all don’t.
Now for that one comment about it seeming like a bedtime story. Yes, it did start out as a bedtime story but it grew into something much more epic, and as you get more toward the end it really gets intense. I don’t think that global domination by the world’s worst villain is something I would tell my kids to get them to go to sleep.
Like I said before, I’m not trying to be rude Vincent (after all you did take time to write,) just making my points on what you said. And in fact I like to hear about what everybody thinks about my book. I welcome your thoughts, especially because Vincent is the first person to say anything negative about my book since it came out on January 1, 2009. You can find the youtube playlist for the audio book here http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F84528CDEAC207ED.
I hope you enjoy it.
Jake – my dad’s ( the author) mouthpiece